# Neo-Thomism in Brazil

Neo-Thomism has held a significant influence among Brazilian Catholic philosophers since its introduction in the early 20th century.
Unlike its neighboring countries of Hispanic America, Brazil did not have universities until 1920. This caused Scholastic theology (and philosophy as a whole) to follow a notably different pathway from that of the rest of the continent. The only example of tertiary education during the Colonial era were a number of clerical institutions, usually founded and directed by the Society of Jesus. Because of this, Brazilian scholasticism was never able to assert a notable influence and had almost disappeared by the end of the 18th century. More than a hundred years later, the Neo-Scholastic movement arrived to the country and started to attempt a revitalization of traditional philosophy.

## Early years (up to 1930)

Probably the earliest appearance of Neo-Thomism in Brazil was the publication at Recife of Lições de Filosofía Elementar, Racional e Moral by José Soriano de Souza (1833–1895) in 1871, eight years before the Aeterni Patris encyclical. Close to the views of Matteo Liberatore and Ceferino González, the work attacks Rationalism, rejects the possibility of creating a new order based on reason without taking God into account, and develops thouroughly on the relationship between faith and reason. De Souza was not a cleric but a lay physician who had studied philosophy at Leuven and worked as a teacher at the Recife School of Law. Despite the highly innovative nature of the text considering its context, it did not have a lasting influence.
The pioneering institution in teaching Catholic philosophy to laymen at Brazil was the Paulistan School of Philosophy of São Bento, founded in 1908 by the German Benedictine abbot Miguel Kruse. The institution had the explicit objective of countering the propagation of utilitarianism and positivism in the country, and promoted Neo-Thomism as its main doctrinal trend. Attached to the Catholic University of Louvain since 1911, the main figures of the school were Belgian priests Carlos Sentroul (1876–1933) and his successor Leonardo Van Acker (1896–1986). A lecturer up to 1917 (when he returned to Belgium) and the co-founder of the School, Sentroul supported a rather moderate approach and, despite his strong Neo-Thomistic convictions, promoted a less apologetics-oriented administration of the institute. In his inauguration address in 1908, he asked the audience to not be prejudiced towards "our adversaries" and called for the teaching of figures such as Duns Scotus, Comte and Kant, in order to "refute errors and recognize truths". Similarly, Van Acker championed a critical assessment of Thomism which took into account that every philosophical system was subject to errors. His studies were largely devoted to Henri Bergson, and were built on the premise of a philosophical pluralism which promoted the conciliation between Thomism and modern thought. The views of both thinkers have been described as contrary to the dominant apologetic focus assumed by Catholic philosophers both in Brazil and in the rest of the world at that time.

## Before the Second Vatican Council (1930–1965)

This belligerent approach was soon after assumed by Leonel Franca, the first rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (1940), which had evolved from the earlier-founded Instituto Católico de Estudos Superiores (1932). Unlike Sentroul and Van Acker, Franca defended traditional Thomism. The University of Rio, founded by cardinal Sebastião da Silveira Cintra, aimed at following the line of the Gregorian University and was directed by the Jesuits. Franca had already published in 1918 a manual called Noções de História da Filosofia (lit. 'Notions of the History of Philosophy') in which he defended Thomism and attacked those philosophical schools perceived as "modernist" by the Catholic Church. As it was for a long time one of the few philosophy textbooks published in Portuguese, it proved highly influential both in the teaching of laymen and in that of priests at seminaries. Styled as a "strict-observance Thomist", Franca's opera omnia extend to 15 volumes, of which the most notable is his A crise do mundo moderno (lit. 'The Crisis of the Modern World').
Another relevant figure from the Pontifical Catholic University was the Benedictine monk Tomás Keller, who did not only advance Neo-Thomism through his comparative studies in light of Leibnizianism, but also became a key promoter of the Liturgical Movement in Brazil. Keller became famous for his speeches asking for liturgical renewal at the Rio de Janeiro Monastery, to which numerous Catholic intellectuals and students attended. Thomism was also promoted at Rio by Maurílio Teixeira-Leite Penido, a Brazilian priest who had returned to his country after years serving as a professor at Fribourg. Despite being a specialist in modern philosophy, Penido had studied Aquinas (mostly through his commentators like Thomas Cajetan) and developed on comparative studies between Scholasticism and other currents of thought. The intellectual school at Rio has been described as notably more conservative than that of São Paulo.
The Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, which annexed the School of São Bento, was founded in 1946. The city had already seen the rise of a number of Catholic philosophical institutions such as the Sociedade de Filosofia e Letras de São Paulo (1930) or the Faculdade de Filosofia Sedes Sapientiae in the early 1940s. The latter would become famous after publishing the first edition of the Summa Theologica in modern Portuguese, translated by Alexandre Corrêa. Despite holding a remarkable orthodoxy regarding Catholic social teaching, most of the aforementioned institutions were closer to the line of Van Acker and Sentroul in attempting a critical and comparative approach to Thomism instead of the apologetical trend championed by Franca.
Conservative Neo-Thomism found a key lay defender in the convert Jackson de Figueiredo (1891–1928). Founder of the A Ordem magazine and member of the Centro Dom Vital intellectual circle, Figueiredo adopted an extremely belligerent position as a Catholic apologist. A self-described intolerant, his views were probably influenced by those of Joseph de Maistre, Charles Maurras and Blaise Pascal.
Brazilian Neo-Thomism experienced an internal controversy after the arrival of Jacques Maritain's philosophy in the 1930s, which coincided with the 1930 Brazilian coup d'état and the subsequent rise to power of Getúlio Vargas, an agnostic politician who nevertheless promoted a reapproachment between the Catholic Church and the government. Maritain's progressive views, along with his support of Christian democracy and his condemnation of authoritarianism, caused a division between those who commended his widely popularized thought and those who condemned it. The O Legionário newspaper of the Archdiocese of São Paulo, presided by well-known anti-liberal Duarte Leopoldo e Silva, became an outspoken critic of Maritain, while traditional institutions of Catholic activism such as those of the Centro Dom Vital abandoned their historical integralist approach and followed the French thinker in his democratic ideals. The rise of Maritain's political thought was coincident with the gradual development of a lay Catholic intellectual elite, in which relevant religious activists like Alceu Amoroso Lima (who led the Centro Dom Vital to its ideological shift) would find a place.
The conflict between supporters and critics of Maritain had lasting consequences in the intellectual history of Paulistan Thomists. The rampant discord among the local clergy motivated Archbishop Carlos Carmelo Vasconcellos Motta to close O Legionário soon after the controversy. The ideas of Maritain were quickly propagated through the whole country, and became dominant in important Catholic institutions such as the Instituto Católico de Estudos Superiores, the Coligação Católica Brasileira, the Confederação Nacional de Operários Católicos, the Equipes Sociais, the Associação de Bibliotecas Católicas and the Ação Universitária Católica.
In spite of the mentioned quarrels, Iberian American Neo-Scholasticism has been described as peaking between the 1940s and 1960s. This golden age was marked by a "vertiginous" growth of Catholic education, both by the creation of new institutions and by the development of already established ones. By 1956, Brazil had thirty-five Catholic faculties of "philosophy, sciences and literature", that amounted for 65% of all such institutions in the country. Most teaching positions in the aforementioned institutions were taken by priests due to the lack of trained professors, what caused Thomism to flourish during that years as the main school of thought. However, their fittingness for such positions due to their rudimentary intellectual formation has been questioned, and their inability to develop an autonomous intellectual movement independent from the use of European manuals has been pointed out as diminishing to the quality of Brazilian Thomism.
Many notable works on Thomistic philosophy were produced in this period, nevertheless, such as the first Brazilian translations of De ente et essentia by José Cretela Jr. and of De regno, ad regem Cypri by Arlindo Veiga dos Santos, and the original works Itinerário para a verdade (1955) by Ubaldo Puppi and Um capítulo da história do tomismo (1962) by Carlos Lopes de Matos. The translation of the Summa contra Gentiles had already been started by Ludgero Jaspers in the 1930s, but was not published until the 1990s.

## After the Second Vatican Council (since 1965)

Since the end of the 1950s, Brazilian Thomism experienced a number of changes which were key for its popularization in the context of a rising promotion of Latin American liberation theology. The main intellectual figure in this period of Brazilian philosophy was the Jesuit priest Henrique Cláudio de Lima Vaz [pt], who vindicated Aquinas' contributions in light of the role of human beings in Heidegger's philosophy of being, and of the centrality of history in Hegelianism.
A large number of Thomistic original works were translated in Brazil during this period. Three new translations of De ente et essentia were produced by João L. Baraúna, Odilão Moura and Carlos A. R. Nascimento in 1973, 1981 and 1995. A new 11-volume edition of the Summa Theologica was published between 1980 and 1981 by Luís Alberto de Boni [pt], an also instrumental figure in the edition of the translated Summa contra Gentiles, which he published along with Moura between 1990 and 1996 in a bilingual format. Moura also translated the Devotissima expositio super symbolum apostolorum in 1975 and the Compendium Theologiae in 1978. Nascimento also contributed with a number of texts, of which the most notable was the Expositio super librum Boethii De Trinitate in 1999 and a new edition of De regno in 1997. The publishing of A imperfeição intelectiva do espírito humano by Luciano Mendes de Almeida in 1977 was also a landmark of this epoch.
The study of medieval philosophy in Brazil found in De Boni an important promoter after the 1970s. An ex-Capuchin friar and Doctor of Philosophy, he returned to Brazil after finishing his studies in Germany and promoted the arrival of other intellectuals to the country. De Boni served as president of the Brazilian Commission of Medieval Philosophy and worked extensively to improve the availability in Brazilian libraries of content regarding medieval thought. Aside from this, he published a large number of articles and compilations on the subject. The main reference work on medieval philosophy in Brazil, "Filosofia e Filosofias na Idade Média" was published by Celestino Pires in 1982, in order to help at a series of meetings about the subject at the University of Brasília. The Brazilian Society of Medieval Philosophy was also founded in this period.
The developers of Thomism in Brazil after the Second Vatican Council have been categorized in three trends: the "traditionalists", the "progressives" and the "reformulators". Among the traditionalists, the main exponents of the movement were Gustavo Corção and Carlos Nougué [pt].
The only academic journal specifically dedicated to medieval philosophy currently is the Scintilla, established in 2004 and published by the Franciscans of Curitiba.